The Undefeatable God

Today, many think God can be defeated, disputed with, embarrassed, cheated or even ridiculed …forgetting that the worlds and powers can be likened to plastic toys in His hands. I watch how people struggle and hustle for power and the intense tensions to win … and the wicked ambitions to acquire illegitimate gains … the vanity of it all. But what stuns me the most is why we think God is surprised, taken aback or slightly disturbed – when it all rests in His hands and while He cannot be changed by anything. Anything invariably happens because He permits it or decides to simply watch it. No one can breathe for a second without Him. Our sanity is in His hands. When He decides an intervention, He cannot be stopped … whatever He has concluded must be so and exactly at the time ordained by Him. God's transcendence means that He is outside space and time, and therefore eternal and unable to be changed by forces within the universe.

In a recent reflection, I recalled my very early years, always eagerly awaiting gifts and presents on birthdays – and especially when my father returned from a trip. One toy that I never really quite forgot was an ARMY SET. This was a collection of tiny soldiers, tanks and battle terrain paraphernalia enabling you to create mock battles …you would have the hundreds of different soldiers which you can move as you wish …and create victories and defeats. Of course they were all plastic objects and nothing happened until you pushed the objects … for me, it was extremely fascinating as a young boy to play with the possibilities, to achieve whatever end I desired.

It is either we know and believe the true God or we seek idols. The god many call “god” is not the God of the Bible. The God of the Bible is in absolute and complete control of everything – without any exception … whether we refer to the explosions in suns, millions of miles in galaxies undiscovered or political plots in great nations with steel skyscrapers or the thoughts of the woman sitting by her humble hut in the dark forests …

Job 4:17 Shall mortal man be more just than God? shall a man be more pure than his maker? 18 Behold, he put no trust in his servants; and his angels he charged with folly: 19 How much less in them that dwell in houses of clay, whose foundation is in the dust, which are crushed before the moth? 20 They are destroyed from morning to evening: they perish for ever without any regarding it. 21 Doth not their excellency which is in them go away? they die, even without wisdom.

If we truly knew God, we would fear Him, stop trying to educate Him, be silent before Him, worship Him and most of all obey and put all our trust in Him. If we truly knew God, we would hate sin …we would realise the extreme folly of upsetting a deity that disciplines erring mighty angels without any effort … talk less of man. The greatest lie of this postmodern age is the new humanism that puts mankind and its feelings and actions at the center of the universe, essentially denying and even mocking the throne of the Master Controller.

Back to my memories of childhood … at some stage, I did get bored and threw all the soldiers into a box … where dust and time eventually turned all the mock battles into fading memories. I now understand the words of David …

Psa_8:4 What is man, that thou art mindful of him? and the son of man, that thou visitest him?

How can I not humble myself and praise God even as I see all that He has put in and planned for humanity, His wonderful plan of eternal salvation in Jesus Christ, the Helper He gives in His Holy Spirit, the lamp for our feet – His word … and all the many victories ordained through us, that we could have.

Psa 139:14 I will praise thee; for I am fearfully and wonderfully made: marvellous are thy works; and that my soul knoweth right well. 15 My substance was not hid from thee, when I was made in secret, and curiously wrought in the lowest parts of the earth. 16 Thine eyes did see my substance, yet being unperfect; and in thy book all my members were written, which in continuance were fashioned, when as yet there was none of them. 17 How precious also are thy thoughts unto me, O God! how great is the sum of them!